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From time to time I review the queries that drive traffic to the website. Once such query is for the term "PAWG." I was unfamiliar with the term and searched for it until I found my my site (an earlier version of Thumper's Corner) where I found this conversation: Black men do you ignore PAWGS?

Cynique, I'd actually forgotten how wild y'all used to get I miss those days...before the corporate take over of the net.

Can you image a conversation like that on, say, Facebook today? Assuming you got past the sensors and the prudes, it is still technically impossible because of the restrictions on what people are permitted to do social media. There is so much less freedom on social media today than there is on the broader internet.

Somehow we are placated with only the "thumbs up" -- when so many of us really want to use a thumbs down, but we can't.

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The original thread is so beneath AALBC's content quality that if I didn't personally know Troy Johnson I would have unfollowed AALBC on all platforms -facebook, Twitter, etc. Conflating a hypothetical Facebook post and a discussion on PAWGs (whom I love by the way) is unfair. After reading the first sentence, which included the word "homo," I didn't have a strong desire to continue. Freedom of speech aside, both homo and PAWG seem out of step with the editorial content of AALBC.

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LMBFAO. I forgot what PAWGs meant. Anyway, I still maintain to this day, that BrownBeauty was one of Kola Boof's many alter egos. I also suspected SerenaSailor was a troll. In his early appearances on the board, (he?) could barely express himself. Then, suddenly, he became articulate and long-winded. There was a whole cast of characters who'd pop up on the board, even in the middle of the night, and parrot Kola's views. They would always come out when the subject was about black womanhood and its African influences.

I certainly miss the input from posters like ChrisHayden and Yukio and ABM and Mzuri and Ntfs_encrypton and Nels and Schakspir and Moonsigns and Jackie, but those others I never quite trusted their authenticity; just a gut feeling. My favorite of all time was Igbogirl(?), who everybody thought was the avatar of Lola with the Nigerian surname who (was)is a reporter-at-large on CNN. (My memory for names is failing me.) She was so profane and vile but I luved her, not to mention the terrible lascivious pictures Kola used to post. Ahhh, those were the good ol days. oops I mean bad ol days. >sigh<

Anyway, I standby everything I said on that thread. I was old then, and I'm old now and haven't changed a bit.

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Cynique you are thinking of Lola Ogunnaike. She emailed me, way back when, and said she was being impersonated on the boards.

No doubt Kola Boof was all over that conversation. But I can't prove anything. Oh and speaking about the "lascivious" photos posted by Kola -- Google dropped me from serving ads for a couple of weeks for the obscene photos she posted. I had to remove two or three before they let me serve ads again. But yeah those were the good old days :-)

mosaicbooks, aw man the discussion forums are the exact opposite of editorial content (). If they reflected my views they would not be nearly as interesting. Besides the idea that you know what a PAWG is tells me something about your sensibilities.

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LMBFAO. I forgot what PAWGs meant. Anyway, I still maintain to this day, that BrownBeauty was one of Kola Boof's many alter egos. I also suspected SerenaSailor was a troll. In his early appearances on the board, (he?) could barely express himself. Then, suddenly, he became articulate and long-winded.

### Ha! Ha! This is so true. I recall him hysterically ranting and railing at the slightest perceived slight of BW. And his psychotic profane laced accusations of every male writer who disagreed with him, as being gay, was over the top! The boy was obsessed with accusing other males of being homosexuals even though the subject at hand/post had absolutely nothing to do with sex or homosexuality! It was ridiculous! But now that I think of it, it's quite possible he could have been one her many hydra heads. Hmmmmmm......

There was a whole cast of characters who'd pop up on the board, even in the middle of the night, and parrot Kola's views. They would always come out when the subject was about black womanhood and its African influences.

### This is also true. I recall you calling her out about these seemingly never ending phantom doppelganger profiles. Strangley, they would come and go (absent when she was absent) in support of her rants, venomous personal attacks and race baiting. I didn't notice it at first but after a while it became very obvious and very tedious, especially her passionate denials and lying....

I certainly miss the input from posters like ChrisHayden and Yukio and ABM and Mzuri and Ntfs_encrypton and Nels and Schakspir and Moonsigns and Jackie, but those others I never quite trusted their authenticity; just a gut feeling.

### Yeah, there were quite a few interesting characters back then. I wonder what happened to them. I'm sure they are posting somewhere out there in the cyber universe. I recall being a big fan of Mzuri until she made three preemptive personal attacks on me for absolutely no reason! WTF?? I was stunned and taken aback. After the third snarky personal dig, I could no longer ignore her unwarranted attacks. It was on! Ha! Ha! Ha!

My favorite of all time was Igbogirl(?), who everybody thought was the avatar of Lola with the Nigerian surname who (was)is a reporter-at-large on CNN. (My memory for names is failing me.) She was so profane and vile but I luved her,...

### Ha! You are so on point! She was an outrageous character. As I recall, her first posts were reasonable but suddenly she descended into extreme vulgarity and toxic racism. It was so bad and out of control, I was waiting for bro Troy to pull the plug. The brother showed great restraint until it reached critical mass and he could no longer allow her to drag the forum down with her escalating antics. And if you recall, she attempted to sneak in the back door with a bogus profile that reeked of her easily recognizable obscene spewing. I seriously wondered if she had a malfunctioning brain issue....

...not to mention the terrible lascivious pictures Kola used to post.

### OMG! The woman was insane!! But she was very entertaining and I loved the heated convoluted debates she generated. Her presence was great for the board. When she did not post, there was a noticeable lull in the traffic. For or against her, her posts generated a lot of chatter. And I loved epic battles between her and Ms. Chinuqe. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ahhh, those were the good ol days. oops I mean bad ol days. &gt;sigh&lt;

### Ya know, I often times think about those tumultuous days. I came to the board late in comparison to its lifespan. I used to read the various threads and posts all the time but I never wrote a post, response or chimed in. Then one day, I could no longer stand on the side lines. I had to join the fray. Although I got into quite a few knife fights, I had a ball. I would love to relive some of those spirited dialogues, debates and fire storms. It was a lot of fun......Dang!

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Cynique, I'd actually forgotten how wild y'all used to get I miss those days...before the corporate take over of the net.

### So true bro Troy. Those were some fun days. I loved it! When you changed the board format…it was a done deal! It was like a pointy lead pencil in the gazing eyeball! I think many of the former members were intimidated by the format change and lacked the know how savvy to adjust or re-register. Those were some exciting days. Before I joined, I used to read the forum all the time. When I did join, I remember tip toeing around the edges because I was a newbie and I respected the senior posters. I recall how excited I was when I got my first 100 posts. That’s when I went for broke and challenged everything I felt was suspect. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Can you image a conversation like that on, say, Facebook today? Assuming you got past the sensors and the prudes, it is still technically impossible because of the restrictions on what people are permitted to do social media. There is so much less freedom on social media today than there is on the broader internet.

### You are so correct. With the uber political correctness, censorship and NSA style monitoring of social media outlets, the freedom of subject matter is not what it used to be. Last year I got a stern warning from YouTube concerning the posts I made. There were some Negroes who were so enraged by my commentaries, they sought to have me banned! I was given a warning and put on probation! WTF??!! Not once did I use profanity, threats nor encourage violence. Yet I was read the riot act and threatened with being banned because of complaints about the tone and phrasing of my opinions. I will admit they were harsh, but everything I said was true. But it didn’t matter if it was true or not, certain people were offended and I was served up to the Thought Police…..

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Really nice to read the perspective of someone who was here back then Xeon. I HAD to change the software I was using for the boards. It was so much work to keep the spammers away. Then the server would get full and crash the boards.

These boards get spammed every day too but I can ban the poster and remove all the posts with a click of a mouse.

Speaking of YouTube, I get some crazy, racist posts on my YouTube videos but I never complain about them and I very rarely delete any.

It is really too bad Youtube tried to ban you. The whole process is completely arbitrary and needless to say skewed against free expression.

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Xenon, on the old board, you were known as Ntfs_encrypton, right? As I recall there was a story behind this name, having to do with a technical term that came up during your first connecting with the board, and you just decided to stick with it. You were always one of my favorite posters because we usually agreed on things, and you used to give my nemesis ChrisHayden a run for his money.

In my previous post here, I just cited the posters who appeared in the PAWGs thread Troy provided a link for, but there were a host of other regulars who were among my favorites. There was Crystal, Urban-Scribe, Yvette, Ferocious Kitty, Sister Gal, Li-Li, Linda, Tanya, Babygirl, Soul Sister, a-woman, Ce-Ce, WaterStar, Lambd, Doberman, Carey- not to mention, THUMPER. Others came and went and a few well-known authors were among them.

IMO, the chat room/discussion board phenomena that took the Internet by storm back in the '90s, fizzled to some degree because the novelty wore off as things got repeticious. Also these venues had to compete with the various social media outlets. Now these original forums are dinosaurs. And, so it goes...

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Xenon, on the old board, you were known as Ntfs_encrypton, right? As I recall there was a story behind this name, having to do with a technical term that came up during your first connecting with the board, and you just decided to stick with it. You were always one of my favorite posters because we usually agreed on things, and you used to give my nemesis ChrisHayden a run for his money.

### Ok…Ok…yeah, it’s me. Honest confession. Ha! Ha! The NTFS encryption was just a techie term that your Windows OS uses to encrypt data. That’s all. I changed my logon name but I did it for no particular reason. As you may know, Xeon is the name of an Intel chip. Ok…Ok…maybe I’m a little nerdy…Ha! Ha! Ha!

In my previous post here, I just cited the posters who appeared in the PAWGs thread Troy provided a link for, but there were a host of other regulars who were among my favorites. There was Crystal, Urban-Scribe, Yvette, Ferocious Kitty, Sister Gal, Li-Li, Linda, Tanya, Babygirl, Soul Sister, a-woman, Ce-Ce, WaterStar, Lambd, Doberman, Carey- not to mention, THUMPER. Others came and went and a few well-known authors were among them.

### I remember them all. There were some very interesting posters and I got along with most (I think…). However, there were those that I was constant conflict with. Tanya was one and Seranasalior was the other. Tanya was a skin color demagogue, railing against blacks who were light complexioned (e.g. Angela Davis and Katherine Cleaver) , using juvenile epithets as “authentic” (meaning a darker phenotype). SS was hysterical about any perceived or real slight of black women and obsessed with male homosexuality. As I stated before, I was a big fan and supporter of Mizura until till she did that unwarranted 180 on me. I never figured that out. But I do know I was relentless in my counter attacks on her. I never wanted to do that because I knew she could be very lethal and vicious in her personal attacks on those she arbitrarily singled out. She was very erratic with this behavior. I did not have a desire nor choice to go there but I couldn’t let her get away with her unprovoked and senseless personal attack against me. Oh well…..

IMO, the chat room/discussion board phenomena that took the Internet by storm back in the '90s, fizzled to some degree because the novelty wore off as things got repeticious. Also these venues had to compete with the various social media outlets. Now these original forums are dinosaurs. And, so it goes...

### Sigh….this is very true. Since the introduction to numerous social media outlets (blogs, Facebook, Instagram, cell phone texting, YouTube, et al), I have noticed a dramatic drop in forum activity and posting. I used to post at numerous boards and I have noticed the decline. One board I had joined was called “Afro Chat” (I’m sure you may have heard of it). The administrator was a hard core Afro-nudnik race nationalist and he had zero tolerance for anyone who disagreed with his thinking. He would block and delete all anyone’s posts for questioning or posting counter points to his inane racist ramblings. In fact, he made an unapologetic disclaimer about doing so.

Even though you and another poster may be going at it about a heated subject, if he disagree with what you were posting, he would chime in and threaten to kick you off the board. As long as you were willing to parrot and support his racist spewings, you could stay. But if you ran counter to his race ideology, done deal….you were banned! For example, a black woman posted that she was in a relationship with a white man and that she was very happy with her new found relationship. She said she had nothing against black men but this particular relationship was working very well for her since her pervious relationships (with black men) were unhealthy for her. Shouldn’t have done that! He stated he had read her post and had not made up his mind if he was going to “ban her” from the board for what she posted. He said he was indecisive at that point. Then went on to eviscerate her for her “traitorous race behavior”. As you suspect, it was just a matter of time before I was banned. Done deal….

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Richardmurry, you are right but keep in mind the game is rigged against small sites in a way that it was not just a few years ago. I've written a lot about this over the last two years and will give folks another example in a different post. The only reason I have a chance in 2014 is that AALBC.com is old and big. Plus, I'm passionate about the subject, keep overhead low and have some technical skill. In 2014 I'm working on building community support for what I establishing more partnerships with like minded entities.

Xeon, we have lost a lot over the last few years. In 17 years I rarely deleted posts. One time I had to delete posts from someone posting as a known journalist. Sometimes I would delete posts of people who just blatantly pirated complete articles from another indie sites. Occasionally I've had to delete images that were just too graphic, XXX in nature.

Xeon, I've even been banned by Google for serving ads in the old Thumper's Corner, because it violated their "standards" I looked at the pages most Kola Boof's rants. But instead of removing the offending posts I removed the Google Ads. I HATED Google telling me what I could post, and preemptively banning the site. Sure I lost revenue, but keeping the site's freedom was more important. Now Kola Boof is doing her thing on Face book and no longer posts here. As Cynique would say, "...and so it goes."

I simply do not believe in banning posters. If I want to go somewhere were no one disagrees with me I'll go to Facebook.

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Think Obama trying to push health care reform through strictly on the merits of the act: Should be a no brainier, right? But instead he has to deal with an opposing party that will stop at virtually nothing to see him and health care reform fail

I've seen several terrific sites die because no one will buy books from them. Even my sites unit sales are down 19%, book sales even more. That does not even make sense?! But reasons are simple.

How many times do you hear authors say follow me on twitter or like me on Facebook? Once you send people to Facebook they don't leave, they certainly are not buying books there. Some authors don't even have a website.

Authors used to have links to sites they liked. But without a site, or a site that attracts visitors, sites like mine no longer get referrals from authors sites.

We are programmed to promote entities that do serve us. We contribute to our own demise.

Hey weren't we talking about PAWGs? PAWG discussions bring traffic, not dry lamenting over the state of the internet :-)